The Charge

They're fierce, brutal and ruthless—and bent on leaving their deadly
mark on the streets of America.

The Case

It's possible that maybe Gangland has hit
a wall of some sort. When the show began, it provided a useful service: it
profiled criminal gangs, clubs, and organizations of all types all across
America. The mixture of first-person testimony and historical research made it a
must for anyone curious about crime. However, as it has progressed through four
seasons, it's becoming apparent that there are just not enough gangs to really
fill out so many shows. There are some superb episodes here, but there are also
too many that are repetitive and trivial. This would seem like a very good
closing point for the series, but History may unfortunately decide to prolong it
far longer than it should.

Gangland: The Complete Season Four has 12 episodes on three
discs:

Disc One • "Highway to Hell" The
Avenues are the most violent and dangerous Mexican gang in Los Angeles, and only
increased their power when they aligned themselves with the powerful Mexican
Mafia.

• "Devil's Fire" The Pagans are not known outside
the Eastern Seaboard, but their penchant for violence has made them one of the
most feared outlaw biker gangs in the United States.

• "Divide and Conquer" The Latin Kings rule
Chicago's streets and prisons more thoroughly and viciously than any other gang
in the city's history.

• "Kill 'Em All" Beginning as a crew of hit men
for hire in the 1980s, the Best Friends decided to seek power for themselves as
rulers of the city's massive drug trade.

Disc Two • "Kill or Be Killed" LMG,
or Love Murdering Gangsters, are the deadliest gang in Memphis, Tennessee,
making that city's murder rate one of the highest in the nation.

• "Boys of Destruction" The Boys of Destruction
rule the streets of St. Louis, Missouri, with a taste for cruelty that spares no
one, not even women and children.

• "Aryan Terror" The Aryan Brotherhood of Texas
began as a white prison gang but has spread out onto the streets of Dallas and
is increasingly becoming more dangerous to anyone in their path.

• "Silent Slaughter" The Sons of Silence are the
biggest outlaw biker gang in Colorado and their reputation for brutality has
made them more respected by larger gangs who attempt to enter the state.

Disc Three • "Killing Snitches" The
Hidden Valley Kings control a small but vital part of Charlotte, North
Carolina's geography, and they use the region's insularity to fend off both
criminal rivals and law enforcement.

• "Everybody Killers" The Hoover Criminals are
Portland, Oregon's most treacherous street gang, and are far more dangerous than
most gangs because they are not tied to any particular territory.

• "Dead Man, Inc." Dead Man Incorporated began as
a white murder-for-hire prison gang in Maryland, but has branched out into one
of the most powerful organized crime syndicates in the U.S. penal system

• "Biker Wars 2" Since the 1970s, the Hell's
Angels and the Mongols have waged a bloody war over which outlaw biker gang gets
the right to rule the highways of California.

For the most part, this has some first-rate episodes. The one on the Pagans,
for instance, is jaw-dropping. Seeing how the gang once shot a Mafia associate
in broad daylight in front of a police station and was so violent that they even
chased the mighty Hell's Angels out of Philadelphia is the kind of revelation
you watch this show for. Similarly, one gangbanger delivers a pithy epigraph
that could apply to every single criminal profiled in all four seasons of this
show when he recalls that he was into doing things so illegal that just by
waking up in the morning, he was breaking the law. It's fair to say that most of
this season ranks amongst this show's best, with typically thorough research
into the history of gangs that have sometimes not been fully explored. This
thoroughness has become so famous that it actually leads to one of the season's
most amusing moments: during the Sons of Silence episode, Gangland's
camera crew visits a Colorado biker convention where they are greeted by members
of the SOS, all of whom are wearing T-shirts suggesting that the Gangland
crew commit certain anatomical impossibilities.

The key problem this season is that the show has spent too many episodes on
gangs that are minor at best. The Hidden Valley Kings, the Hoover Criminals, the
Love Murdering Gangsters, and the Boys of Destruction are all fairly
interchangeable in how small and insignificant they are. They control tiny
swaths of territory (if that) and their stories are so clichéd that you'll
have a hard time telling them apart, even though they all take place in
different regions. This isn't helped by the fact that these gangsters all dress
the same and spout the same tired lines about "keepin' it real" and
"puttin' in work." If you don't doze off halfway through these
episodes, you're a truly dedicated viewer. Essentially, one-third of this season
is pretty useless, which is a much better average than, say, Monster
Quest, but is much too high for this series.

Overall, however, it would be a mistake to claim that this is a weak
collection. It's weaker than others, yes, but it's still worth watching. It's
just that it's hard to imagine how much more the show could do—there just
aren't any more gangs, clubs, crews, or associations left to cover, if the
lesser episodes on this set are any indication. Get it to complete your
collection, but don't be surprised if you skip a few more episodes than
usual.

Presentation is typical History: 1.78:1 non-anamorphic (why?) and Dolby
Digital 2.0 Stereo mix, both satisfactory. The extras are 5-minute excerpts of
extra footage included on each disc, edited from various episodes throughout the
show's history, adding different perspectives on gang-related topics, such as
women in gangs, territory, and names. These are worth a look.